Howdy folks It feels like a million years since our last chat, so much real stuff has happened. (Definition – “real stuff” means make the right move next, or else BIG dwang!). We are here in the party capital, Phuket. Safe and rested, well fed and digesting our antics. The little 9 hour hop from

Our filed flight plan distance was 4 600km, but we’d cut the corner and cheekily bored a tunnel through Mauritian airspace, so only 4 100 km had to be covered. By nightfall we’d flown for eight and a half hours of the twenty-one. A little more than half the fun lay ahead. Preparing for night

About getting the additional fuel into the wings. Jean did consider climbing out on to the wing and we’ve discussed the idea a couple of times. But ultimately he figured it’d be easier to put it through the two transfer pumps under the pilot’s seat. It did mean removing and re-attaching some pipes in flight,

Tim called me at 2.20 am this morning saying that he couldn’t get hold of James to give him the weather forecast. I tried too but without luck and so went back to sleep leaving Tim to keep trying. At 4.30 I jumped awake wondering why J & J hadn’t called for a final check

Sias from VFRPlanner.co.za has sent in the following weather forecast for this leg: Working on a 13/8/2011 01:00Z take-off from Colombo to Phuket; I have added the winds to a 105kts cruising speeds which brings us to a 9h08 flight with a nice tail wind at 7500ft, which comes at a cost…http://www.vfrplanner.org/app/nav/vfrplan/plan.htm?planId=8081851806the spot graphs are

I have just had a call from J & J they are in a clean air conditioned terminal building in Phuket. Jean said he has never seen such a clean and well organized airport in his life. And they are in really good spirits after a brilliant flight of just over 9 hours. The last

Last night we had had confirmationt the guys had been in contact with Maldives Air Traffic Control and were making good progress towards Sri Lanka. Hopefully we will have some more good news soon as to where they are and how long still till their arrival. In the meantime here is a video clip on

I just had a brief chat to James … they are both really exhausted and slightly rattled. They landed after a 21 hour flight at just after 4am SA time after a very tough flight. During the daylight hours they found their way around the storms OK, but there were periods in the night when

The fuel pump filters have been cleaned out as expected one was completely blocked. There are filters before the pumps but they are coarser than the ones in the pumps so very fine fluff gets past the coarse filters and then blocks the pump filters. We will fit extra filters when we get a chance

Things are looking a whole lot brighter after an afternoon nap on the back of a couple of Lion lagers each. It’s 23h45 local time already and we’re up at 04h00 time for the airport though, so we’re not exactly going to slum it out. Also, it’s Friday night and there’s a wedding going on